Saturday, May 18, 2013

The Toronto... Almost Miracle...


Wow.  Long time no see Underdogs.  Sorry about the hiatus, and for missing the rest of those promised NBA articles the past three months.  All I can say is I’ve been in Hockey Country and that isn’t an easy thing to shake.  Toronto, and all of its historical NHL swagger, even if it hasn’t been good history as of late, is the real culprit.  It seems that one comes to this town and suddenly loses the will to write much about American Sports. 

Obviously, here, hockey is king and the town makes no attempt to hide it.  Let’s say the NBA’s Raptors get 4% of the pie, the CFL’s Argonauts get 8%, and the Blue Jays get 18%.  The Maple Leafs get the rest, and that’s 70% if you’re scoring at home, (of my fictitious Sports Fans Awareness Pie Chart.)  The point is that they love their hockey here and they love it so much more than any other sport.  It’s not even close.  So of course, you can only imagine how much was riding on the Leafs climactic game seven Monday night in Boston.  The entire city was abuzz with possibility.  Ready to erupt in the glorious coronation of a long awaited return to playoff relevance!  The dreams seemed justified though, because after two straight must-win games, the team was bristling with confidence and had positioned themselves as a shining example to underdogs everywhere; a team of destiny.  

The night before I had been at a comedy show at Second City, with some friends from the Book of Mormon touring cast, and the theatre’s lobby spills directly into Wayne Gretzky’s Hockey bar.  So on our way out we found ourselves swarmed with jovial Leafs fans, all decked out and cheering at level 11 volume, as their boys tried to close out game 6 at home.  And just down the street a few blocks south and east, the Air Canada Centre was rumbling.  Throngs of fans lined the closed-off streets to watch the game all night on the Jumbo-tron, jumping up and down screaming and waiving flags, and they seemed to get just as much TV airtime as the paying customers inside.  One of the commentators noted, “There’s an estimated twenty thousand fans outside watching, and undoubtedly later on, there will be another twenty thousand that will claim they were.”  It was a glorious time.  And as the final buzzer sounded, I couldn’t tell if the eruption was coming from inside Gretzky’s or in from outside on the street!   The Leafs had done the extremely improbable, they came back to tie the series after going down 3-1, to force the most thrilling game in all of sports; Game 7!

I’m not sure what happened with the scheduling or why, but it was the very next night in Boston that they played it, and the city of Toronto was basically shut down to anything else.  The throngs of fans were back at the Air Canada Centre but even more this time because there was no one inside.  I opened the window of my apartment balcony and you could hear the ups and downs from the fans, as if the entire city had a sole consciousness, united in willing the Leafs to the next round.

And midway through the third period it had been working extremely well.  A couple of goals early the period had extended Toronto’s lead in the game to 4-1, with only about seven minutes to play.  You could feel the heartbeat of the city.  It pounded louder and louder as the minutes ticked away, and victory almost seemed ordained.  They were moving on.  They had defied the odds and done the impossible, and… oh wait.  The Bruins scored.  The Boston fans came to life again, but it was still subdued.  The collective conscious of Toronto conceded the goal with a mild wince.  It was unwelcome, but not overly, because a 4-2 lead still felt good.  But then with 90 seconds to go, fortune changed once again.  Two Boston goals tied the game with 20 seconds to go, and later a golden goal in overtime, ended the 2013 season for the Maple Leafs for good.  Wow.  An unbelievable finish, and yes, that word is overused. 

And where did it leave the Underdogs.  Crushed.  Where did it leave Toronto? 
A much deeper question.
Thanks for reading.
Underdogs out!         

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